The present invention relates to a system which has the ability to note the presence of and/or the arrival and departure times of field based employees at various work sites, located remotely from their employer's main office. The system is designed to communicate and receive information from the field based employees through the telephone network. It is, in effect, a remotely operable, employee time clock system and will be referred to herein by its trademark Timeclerk.TM..
Automatic Number Identification (ANI) is a telephone related system and protocol by which the telephone number of the calling party is supplied to the premises of the called party, before the called party answers the telephone call. ANI has been instrumental in facilitating customer billing, and has gained increased importance recently, ever since telephone calls have begun to be more often routed through several, different telephone carriers.
The term "Caller-ID" refers in the art to an Automatic Number Identification system, which performs the same function as ANI, but with a different type of protocol and hardware. The Caller-ID system and protocol is well known to those skilled in the art and does not have to be described in detail herein. As reference, for example, note the Bellcore report entitled "Voiceband Data Transmission Interface Generic Requirements", which is identified as Technical Reference TR-NWT-000030, issued Oct. 2, 1992. For general information concerning Caller-ID one can contact Information Exchange Management, Bellcore, 445 South Street, Room 2J-125, P.O. Box 1910, Morristown, N.J. 07962, Telephone No. (201)829-4785.
It is known to use ANI to display the calling telephone number at the called telephone, as a means for enabling the called party to screen incoming telephone calls. Recently, proposals have been advanced for using ANI information for gathering data about the shopping preferences and other habits of individuals for purposes of telemarketing, financial services, home shopping and the like. The proposals are based on the assumption that the caller and the registered owner of the calling telephone are the same person.
Various other systems have been described in the prior art which enable individuals to communicate with central computers using passwords to gain access to the computers. Such computer systems have been used in the past for such diverse services as providing data base searching and for forwarding and receiving messages. In some existing computer systems, software has been provided to time the length of messages and to stamp the messages with time and date information.
Voice recognition systems are also in use. Such systems are used for extracing information from or entering information into voice response systems, especially where tones cannot be generated via the telephone. By using simple commands, such as `yes` `no`, `in`, and `out`, digits etc. can be identified with some degree of accuracy.
Significant resources and costs are being invested by many businesses to keep track of the whereabouts and/or arrival and departure times of their field based employees, e.g. nurses, field technicians, delivery and repair personnel or the like, at various work sites such as the homes of patients or the like. Yet, the prior art has not recognized any need, purpose, desire, or advantage to use ANI and/or Caller-ID information and to correlate it with personal passwords, i.e. computer access codes. That is, the prior art has not conceived of the idea that using and correlating ANI and/or Caller-ID information with individual employee computer access codes enables determining the identity of and the present location of a calling employee, nor to use this information to automatically track the whereabouts of the employee, and generate reports of the number of hours spent by the employees at remote work sites.
Existing computer based systems for reporting the arrival and departure times of employees require manual intervention and are inherently prone to being abused. Further, present systems do not provide reliable and virtually instantaneously available reports on the work schedules of field employees, such as would enable businesses to complete the preparation of service bills and invoices much sooner.